Editor: John, please share with us some details and background about yourself.
John Hanson: I was born in Didcot, Berkshire UK in 1945. I had Spanish and English grandparents. My mother was in Land Army, my father RAF. Happy childhood. Father RSPCA Inspector (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals). Moved around every seven years. Lived in Halifax, moved to Cheltenham, went to work in Cheltenham as a Chef, joined Birmingham City Police in 1966, then settled in Birmingham for over 27 years.
I retired from the West Midlands Police in 1995, after serving 27 and a half years, fourteen of which were in the CID. I have three children, now adults. One is a Police Inspector, the other is a Civilian Radio operator, working at Bourneville Lane Police Station in Birmingham, West Midlands close to the famous Cadbury’s factory.
Editor: Please share with us the details of your UFO involvement? What happened?
John Hanson: On the 19th of January 1995, I was at home suitably ensconced in the depth of the armchair watching of all things the X-Files which ironically was showing an episode about an Iraqi pilot chasing a UFO when the telephone rang. It was a close police colleague of mine who told me about a UFO that had been seen over Birmingham at 6:30 p.m., described initially as an orange ball of fire seen over the city center, then witnessed by a doctor in the Moseley area some 4 miles away as a tadpole shaped object with a dark blue head and light blue tail.
Above:some of the best UFO sourcebooks out there (c)2024 J. Hanson/Haunted Skies
As a result of the doctor making a 999 call to the police my colleague and his partner, a female officer, attended at the scene and drove around looking for what had happened to the object when they came across a massive saucer shaped object with a thin rippling red line running through it surrounded by a blue haze, over the Stirchley area of the city some two miles away from where the doctor had reported seeing his “object.”
After interviewing the officer and his colleague it was clear that they had witnessed something very inexplicable. This was the trigger that raised my curiosity. Surely there was no such thing as UFOs, or flying saucers. They didn’t exist, or did they? After all I had no reason to disbelieve the accounts given to me by the two officers.
Above: John Hanson revisits Rendlesham Forest with Colonel Charles Halt, USAF (ret) (c)2024 J. Hanson/Haunted Skies
I contacted the local radio stations and told them what had happened without of course disclosing the officers names, subsequently an article appeared in the Birmingham Evening Mail, bringing its readers attention to a ‘Flying saucer seen over the Police Training Center’ together with a possible explanation that what they had seen could have been a shooting star!
Now I don’t know much about shooting stars, but I do know that logically they don’t behave in this manner, so I felt left with the frustration of not being able to rationally obtain a satisfactory answer to what it was the officers had seen.
Over the next 2-3 years, I was to continue to receive information about other sightings which had taken place on the same evening. They included a variety of objects seen all over the UK, including a “D” shaped object seen by a woman teacher in Oxford, who was exercising her dogs when she saw it moving over the countryside, “following the contours of the open countryside.”
It was at this stage that I met with Dawn Halloway, now my partner, while giving a talk at the local college. How naïve I really was at that early stage of my UFO research, remembering distinctly how unsettling it was listening to a Bill Cooper tape with his revelations about the Secret Government and the recovery of alien bodies, matters that I am not qualified to give any opinions on, other than material like this, in my opinion, should be disseminated with care. I knew of one young man who was very traumatized after listening to the tapes.
Whilst such ‘indoctrination’ may be considered by some to be the only way to get the message across, I think we have to be wary of alienating ourselves against a general public, the majority of whom still remain skeptical of the existence of UFOs and have no comprehension as to how prolific UFO activity was during the middle of the last century.
Above: Probably the definitive book on Rendlesham from the perspective of Col. C. Halt (c)2024 J. Hanson/Haunted Skies
Editor: What happened next?
John Hanson: A strange thing happened, after this talk. I was getting ready for bed at about 11:30 p.m., when I happened to look out of the bedroom window overlooking a road that connects Alvechurch with Redditch Worcestershire, when I saw a silvery blob of light, about the size of a football, hanging on the front of the tree opposite the house, some 30 feet away, at a height of about 12 feet.
I reacted fast and picked up the Panasonic video camera (a heavy item in those days) and started filming. The next thing you hear are words to the effect, “This is taking the P****” and the next thing I knew I was waking up and going downstairs as was my usual manner.
I discussed the evening at the college with my son Alex. He mentioned about a strange “light” he had seen from the bedroom window next to mine. I thought OK, so what! And just forgot about it until about 11:30 a.m., when I thought to myself where is the video camera. I searched the house and couldn’t find it, so I rang my friends and asked them, thinking surely I didn’t leave such a bulky item at the college. One of them, who had given me a lift home, told me she had seen me carrying the camera into the house. Straightaway, like a bolt out of the blue, I remembered filming the UFO and rushed upstairs, where I found the camera under the bed. Eagerly, I opened it and placed the film into a VHS Recorder and was astonished to see the object as I had remembered filming it. Within a couple of minutes, it rushed up into the sky and was gone.
Above: part of the Great British UFO Archives (c)2024 J. Hanson/Haunted Skies
Now I know that there are some people out there who will form their own conclusions about what happened on that late evening, suggesting the value of taking part in hypnotic regression, believing the necessary criteria essential to an abduction experience forms part and parcel of what happened on that late night, a matter I’m not inclined to comment on. All I can tell you is what took place.
Editor: Very interesting story. So what evolved next?
John Hanson: Like so many others before me, and after, I went on that trek to the library and read as much as I could about UFOs, feeling distinctly uneasy about accepting carte blanche those stories involving Close Encounters between humans and aliens. Not that I don’t necessarily disbelieve such encounters have or haven’t taken place. What I felt uneasy about was the way in which some popular UFO authors had carried out their research. I decided the only way to form my own conclusions as to what, who and where this phenomena was all about was to carry out my own research.
At this early stage, I found it incomprehensible to accept why it was that I was supposed to believe that “flying saucers”, a terminology I’m much happier with rather than UFOs (an ambiguity all on its own) could be attributed to the presence of some advanced alien race who changed and updated their machines from ‘Adamski-type craft” (1950s) to triangular ones (1980s), a silly myth propagated by so-called iconic English UFO researchers who should have known that triangular shaped craft were seen before.
Above: John Hanson taking a brief break from archiving (c)2024 J. Hanson/Haunted Skies
It became patently obvious to both of us that the majority of UFO reports would nearly always occur near to ancient sites, and Roman Roads. We put our theory to the test in 1999, when Dawn and I retraced the journey taken by a female motorist, who was driving home along the old Roman Road to Wigmore, Herefordshire, when she and her daughter noticed a yellow oval shaped light pacing the vehicle a few yards away. At one particular point, the “light” shot off across the road and proceeded along a straight course, where it took up a hovering position above the village.
An examination of an old OS map showed the original course of the Roman Road as splitting from the “new road” and crossing the field, confirming the affinity between some (I don’t say all UFOs) and these ancient trackways.
Over the years, Dawn and I were to come across many such accounts, involving ‘encounters’ between motorists and UFOs, the majority of which would invariably take place out in the country, rather than the cities. They nearly always involved similar manifestations, hardly likely to be explained away as earthlights, ball lightning, or plasma energies, as authority in general would have us believe!
Above: says it all Above: John Hanson (c)2024 J. Hanson/Haunted Skies
Rather oddly I was to come across a UFO report which took place at Broadlands Estate, the Hampshire home of Lord Louis Mountbatten, a man who I had the pleasure of meeting through my ex-Father-In-Law, retired CPO Ted West, who had served with Lord Louis on HMS Kelly, being responsible for shooting down a Stuka as the ship sunk beneath his feet at Crete in 1942, whose enthusiasm for the Senior Service, amply propelled by home brewed beer, was to leave me a weaker man, on many occasions during the early period of the 1970s, when I had the privilege of spending time with Ted, then my father-in-law. Halcyon days! His ‘ashes’ after he died were scattered out to sea by Lord Louis himself, a mark of tremendous respect!
I found it always a privilege to meet servicemen who had experienced for themselves some very peculiar phenomenon, going back sometimes to the early 1940s. Who could not be fascinated by stories from World War II pilots, who spoke personally about having seen strange globes of light approaching their aircraft, moving in a process of behavior to be echoed countless times over the years.
Above: a display inside the Great British UFO Archives (c)2024 J. Hanson/Haunted Skies
Another pilot described being ordered to fire on a UFO tracked on radar over the UK in May 1957. Six seconds from firing his missiles the object rose up and accelerated at fantastic speeds, leaving him to ponder what would have happened if he had fired on it.
These weren’t the results of over excited imaginations. They really happened. Sobering in its implication!
Oddly, although the history of ufology contains a number of examples of interaction between UFOs and vehicles, where the electrics are cut out rendering the vehicle immobile, why is it we have never heard of the same process of behavior taking place with aircraft during the 2nd World War. One presumes that if a heavy bomber had been ‘downed’ by UFO activity a member of the crew would have survived to tell the tale, extraordinary as it may be.
Why is it we have never heard of any ‘manifestations’ taking place within the aircraft itself, taking into consideration the “after effects” of UFO exposure which can involve all manner of strange “secondary phenomena” as seen from examination of many cases brought to our attention over the years, where the UFO witness will on occasion experience what they may believe to be unconnected incidents of high strangeness, the severity of which appears to depend on how severe their exposure to the energy fields of the UFO was.
Editor: Now you also looked into the crop circle phenomenon. Please tell us about that.’
Above: Yes, even cops see UFOs! (c)2024 J. Hanson/Haunted Skies
John Hanson: We decided to pay one of many visits to the Silbury Hill, Avebury area of Wiltshire during the mid-1990s after reading about the spectacular pictograms found in farmer’s fields, matters that, of course, attracted the attention of the newspapers and tabloids, who had a field day if you’ll excuse the pun! One can understand why it was that people flocked to Warminster and the outlying hills, eager for a glimpse of the “thing” during the 1960s, each pursuing their own quest, heads craned skywards. Bygone days. People just moved on, grew up and opened up other chapters in their lives. Now those famous places, like Cradle Hill, Starr Hill, lie dormant, errie and foreboding, waiting patiently for the next wave of activity which will happen, but who knows when some reader will happen by perchance on this web page, 50 years from now or when we are all gone!
The same ‘spirit’ was abundantly present in the Alton Barnes area of Wiltshire. There was always a clamor of excitement when details of newly discovered crop circles were posted on the message board of the local watering hole, The Barge Public House, at Honey Street, Alton Barnes. People would race to the scene, eager to experience for themselves that wonderful feeling that pervades the whole consciousness when you step into a newly created crop circle, accompanied by a fresh smell, reminiscent of a cookie out of the oven, which seems rather befitting, as many of these circles appeared to have been stamped out with a giant cooker cutter. Sadly, as time went by more and more, we became convinced that even the most intricate of crop circles were being hoaxed. We saw many people heading out at night-time, wearing camouflage gear but, to be fair, never came across anybody hoaxing, although we would invariably come across people who had seen UFOs and had some fascinating stories to tell, which we always recorded.
Above: John Hanson stakes out a rather suspect location (c)2024 J. Hanson/Haunted Skies
But despite bleary eyes and lack of sleep, having spent the night under the stars, talking to other like minded people, while fires crackled nearby, bodies fueled by enormous amounts of fresh coffee and crisp cut sandwiches purchased from the café in the nearby market town of Marlborough, blinking in the fresh early morning sunshine, we loved itÉbut nothing is constant. We had to move on as the interest faded.
So in a nutshell, a potted history of the crop circle phenomena as we lived it, not forgetting those amusing interludes when woe betide the one errant researcher who chose to walk through the ‘tram lines’ in a field desperate to reach the newly discovered formation of rape, we can never forget the look on his face when he returned to find the farmer had confiscated his trousers!
Fortunately help was at hand in the form of dear old Viv, a lady from Glastonbury, whose old box van was safe harbor for many weary travelers who experienced the delight of meeting, for the first time, her wonderful dog called ‘Bat,’ aptly named for pervading the atmosphere with a sharp pungent smell. Sadly, he passed away some years ago and, despite many other visits to Wiltshire, we lost touch with Viv, but those rich memories remain.
As our enthusiasm and keenness for the crop circles, still an annual event in Wiltshire, dimmed, although one could never become bored with the sheer beauty of the Wiltshire Countryside and its ancient hills, going back thousands of years, we turned out attention eastwards, feeling we should visit what has become perhaps erroneously known as Britain’s equivalent of Roswell.
We never decided to research into the now world wide famous events that occurred in the forest towards the end of December 1980, purely because we felt what allegedly took place had been literally trashed into submission both in books and magazines over the years.
We met up with Brenda Butler who was instrumental with Dot Street and Jenny Randles in investigating the incident right from the beginning, details of which were eventually published in a book entitled SKYCRASH in 1983 (now out of print) and grew to become firm friends, often staying over at her home in Leiston, and through her met up with people like Larry Warren on the 27th of December 2000, in Rendlesham Forest, a date of some significance as we were fortunate enough to film a series of strange rotating lights over the coast across from the field nominated by Larry Warren at the end of track 10 as being where he saw the UFO land in December 1980. All of this in 12 degrees below freezing!
Above: (c)2024 J. Hanson/Haunted Skies
A few years ago, Brenda used to show us strange photos taken with her 35mill camera during her walks through Rendlesham Forest on which the photographs were obscured by what looked like fogging, or globules of light which I used to attribute as camera defects, of moisture on the lens, but didn’t say anything at the time, not wishing to offend her.
Identical effects were to be noticed however using digital photography, a matter that I raised with a friend who is a professional photographer with a Fleet street background, he was very skeptical and suggested a myriad of explanations, but was staggered when he himself captured many anomalies on film at Rendlesham during a visit there with his wife.
I don’t know what to make of the ‘ORBS,’ ‘Streakers,’ strange mists that appear to take on human forms in the forest, some of which I have myself captured on film, although predominately Brenda has the most success rate. Is there a connection with Brenda’s frequent visits to the forest over the last 20 years, 3-4 times a week? Has she become energized in some way? Are they really representative of a spiritual life force or energies swirling around us for the most time unobserved? Nobody knows.
People ask us if we have seen the orbs. The answer to that is a resounding yes. The first time we saw one was at the end of the track leading to East gate. Dawn pointed at the forest floor and asked me if I could see it. I looked carefully and realized with great excitement that I could see this milky white globe about the size of a football hovering a foot off the ground. I took a photograph and captured it on film.
Generally speaking, you didn’t see orbs all over the place, but there were one or two occasions where you knew they would manifest, and expect to see them there sitting in the branches of the tree, while walking down trace 10 or 12. They grew to be a common feature of the forest.
Even with the proof of a strange swirling mist that halted a few inches in front of someone’s face while meditating down at the seat which faces the field nominated by Larry Warren as where he saw the UFO land in December 1980, and the appearance of glowing red and blue ‘streakers.’ resembling laser lights curving through the trees, still didn’t convince me that there was a paranormal/alien influence at work in the forest, although Brenda believed whatever was in there was representative of an alien benevolent life force, following contact between her and the ETs as she calls them.
Above: John Hanson and collaborator Shirley Edwards (c)2024 J. Hanson/Haunted Skies
During our research into all manner of strange phenomenon, we came across details of a house in Washwood Heath, Birmingham, which had been the target of a number of stones being thrown by unidentified persons, over a period of two years, involving the attention of the West Midlands Police who had tried unsuccessfully to catch the culprit, by using surveillance night cameras, and even consulting the Army to estimate the trajectory of where these stones were coming from, all to no avail.
Our research into this and other reports, notably one in the Doncaster area where a similar situation occurred, showed us that inexplicably these ‘fortean’ phenomena occur. What interested us was that the majority of the stones which appeared were clean, round smooth and polished, almost as if they had been thrown from some ancient beach rather than anything man made.
Unfortunately, there is a great deal of difference between reading about these ‘phenomena’ and experiencing them yourself. In this respect, we can tell you that on many occasions while sitting in a remote part of Rendlesham Forest, we have heard the sound of a thus as a stone strikes the forest floor. Our torches swing round eagerly and the light falls on a round smooth pebble, which is nearly too hot to pick up! Some nights we would expect 2-3 of these stones to fall down, which conclusively proves to me that inexplicable phenomena like this exists. How else can you explain them. They aren’t falling from the sky. Who or what is the non-human influence which lies behind the energy being exerted to throw a stone that often flies through the trees to land next to you. In fact, I can claim to have been struck lightly on the back by one of these small stones, as I had been sitting down and stood up.
Whether these events are connected with the famous incident which took place at Rendlesham Forest in 1980, I cannot say. All I can say is what has happened to me personally, which provides much food for thought. Is it possible manifestations can arise in other wooded areas? Perhaps we should all put it to the test!
We are always interested in hearing about peoples experiences, a matter we have always considered a great privilege, particularly matters that have taken place in the UK as we are in the process of completing a first Volume of Haunted Skies, which covers the period 1946-1966. Our own unique catalogue of everyday UFO events that we have examined, which have occurred in and around the skies of the UK, being assisted by our friend Davey Sankey, whose 3D illustrations grace the pages of our unpublished book, many of which can be found on his web site: www.davidsankey.com/profile.asp
Other information can be found on Welcome to UFOs Over Great Britain, a web site we installed many years ago. (Dedicated to Mr. Gordon Creighton, the editor of FSR).
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